Three Statements
INTRODUCTION
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., always saw the civil rights movement in the United States in its broader context and stressed that "the struggle for freedom forms one long front crossing oceans and peoples". Despite the difficult struggle in the United States, he spoke out against racism and war beyond the national borders. He showed particular concern over the situation in South Africa where a monstrous government was "engaged in a grim war against its own Black people".
For him, there was not only the bond between the Black Americans and Africa, but an additional spiritual connexion. For, non-violent resistance, in the form of satyagraha, was born in South Africa under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi, moved to India to secure the independence of that country, and returned to South Africa in the struggle for liberation, before it was taken up by Dr. King in the United States.
Dr. King wrote in his last major work, Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community:
"Among the moral imperatives of our time, we are challenged to work all over the world with unshakeable determination to wipe out the last vestiges of racism...
"Racism is no mere American phenomenon. Its vicious grasp knows no geographical boundaries. In fact, racism and its perennial ally - economic exploitation - provide the key to understanding most of the international complications of this generation.
"The classic example of organised and institutionalised racism is the Union of South Africa. Its national policy and practice are the incarnation of the doctrine of white supremacy in the midst of a population which is overwhelmingly Black. But the tragedy of South Africa is virtually made possible by the economic policies of the United States and Great Britain, two countries which profess to be the moral bastions of our Western world."
Dr. King sought to build "an international alliance of peoples of all nations against racism" and to promote non-violent action to quarantine the racist regime in Pretoria.
He was snatched away at an early age, by a dastardly assassination, but continued to inspire the anti-apartheid movement around the world.
This compilation contains: (a) an appeal he made jointly with Chief Albert Lutuli in 1962 for international action against apartheid; (b) his remarks at a meeting in London in December 1964, while on his way to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize; and (c) his address in New York on Human Rights Day, 1965.
The appeal and the speech in 1965 were published in a pamphlet by the United Nations Centre against Apartheid in 1982. I am grateful to Mr. George M. Houser for giving me a copy of the 1964 speech.
E. S. Reddy
New York
APPEAL FOR ACTION AGAINST APARTHEID
Joint statement by Chief Albert J. Lutuli and the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1962
In 1957, an unprecedented Declaration of Conscience was issued by more than 100 leaders from every continent. That Declaration was an appeal to South Africa to bring its policies into line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
The Declaration was a good start in mobilising world sentiment to back those in South Africa who acted for equality. The non-whites took heart in learning that they were not alone. And many white supremacists learned for the first time how isolated they were.
Measures of Desperation
Subsequent to the Declaration, the South African Government took the following measures:
The Choice
The deepening tensions can lead to two alternatives:
Solution
Intensified persecution may lead to violence and armed rebellion once it is clear that peaceful adjustments are no longer possible. As the persecution has been inflicted by one racial group upon all other racial groups, large-scale violence would take the form of a racial war.
This "solution" may be workable. But mass racial extermination will destroy the potential for interracial unity in South Africa and elsewhere.
Therefore, we ask for your action to make the following possible.
Solution 2
"Nothing which we have suffered at the hands of the government has turned us from our chosen path of disciplined resistance," said Chief Albert J. Lutuli at Oslo. So there exists another alternative - and the only solution which represents sanity - transition to a society based upon equality for all without regard to colour.
Any solution founded on justice is unattainable until the Government of South Africa is forced by pressures, both internal and external, to come to terms with the demands of the non-white majority.
The apartheid republic is a reality today only because the peoples and governments of the world have been unwilling to place her in quarantine.
Translate public opinion into public action
We, therefore, ask all men of goodwill to take action against apartheid in the following manner:
Hold meetings and demonstrations on December 10, Human Rights Day:
Urge your church, union, lodge, or club to observe this day as one of protest;
Urge your Government to support economic sanctions;
Write to your mission to the United Nations urging adoption of a resolution calling for international isolation of South Africa;
Don`t buy South Africa`s products;
Don`t trade or invest in South Africa;
Translate public opinion into public action by explaining facts to all peoples, to groups to which you belong, and to countries of which you are citizens until AN EFFECTIVE INTERNATIONAL QUARANTINE OF APARTHEID IS ESTABLISHED.
SPEECH IN LONDON IN DECEMBER 1964
I understand that there are South Africans here tonight - some of whom have been involved in the long struggle for freedom there. In our struggle for freedom and justice in the United States, which has also been so long and arduous, we feel a powerful sense of identification with those in the far more deadly struggle for freedom in South Africa. We know how Africans there, and their friends of other races, strove for half a century to win their freedom by non-violent methods. We have honoured Chief Lutuli for his leadership, and we know how this non-violence was only met by increasing violence from the state, increasing repression, culminating in the shootings of Sharpeville and all that has happened since.
Clearly there is much in Mississippi and Alabama to remind South Africans of their own country, yet even in Mississippi we can organise to register Negro voters, we can speak to the press, we can in short organise the people in non-violent action. But in South Africa even the mildest form of non-violent resistance meets with years of imprisonment, and leaders over many years have been restricted and silenced and imprisoned. We can understand how in that situation people felt so desperate that they turned to other methods, such as sabotage.
Today great leaders - Nelson Mandela and Robert Sobukwe - are among many hundreds wasting away in Robben Island prison. Against the massively armed and ruthless state, which uses torture and sadistic forms of interrogation to crush human beings - even driving some to suicide - the militant opposition inside South Africa seems for the moment to be silenced: the mass of the people seems to be contained, seems for the moment unable to break from oppression. I emphasise the word "seems" because we can imagine what emotions and plans must be seething below the calm surface of that prosperous police state. We know what emotions are seething in the rest of Africa.
The dangers of a race war - of these dangers we have had repeated and profound warning.
It is in this situation, with the great mass of South Africans denied their humanity, their dignity, denied opportunity, denied all human rights; it is in this situation, with many of the bravest and best South Africans serving long years in prison, with some already executed; in this situation we in America and Britain have a unique responsibility. For it is we, through our investments, through our Governments` failure to act decisively, who are guilty of bolstering up the South African tyranny.
Our responsibility presents us with a unique opportunity. We can join in the one form of non-violent action that could bring freedom and justice to South Africa - the action which African leaders have appealed for - in a massive movement for economic sanctions.
In a world living under the appalling shadow of nuclear weapons do we not recognise the need to perfect the use of economic pressures? Why is trade regarded by all nations and all ideologies as sacred? Why does our Government, and your Government in Britain, refuse to intervene effectively now, as if only when there is a bloodbath in South Africa - or a Korea, or a Vietnam - will they recognise the crisis?
If the United Kingdom and the United States decided tomorrow morning not to buy South African goods, not to buy South African gold, to put an embargo on oil; if our investors and capitalists would withdraw their support for that racial tyranny, then apartheid would be brought to an end. Then the majority of South Africans of all races could at last build the shared society they desire.
Though we in the civil rights movement still have a long and difficult struggle in our own country, increasingly we are recognising our power as voters; already we have made our feelings clear to the President; increasingly we intend to influence American policy in the United Nations and towards South Africa.
"LET MY PEOPLE GO"
Africa has been depicted for more than a century as the home of black cannibals and ignorant primitives. Despite volumes of facts controverting this picture the stereotype persists in books, motion pictures, and other media of communication.
Africa does have spectacular savages and brutes today, but they are not black. They are the sophisticated white rulers of South Africa who profess to be cultured, religious and civilised, but whose conduct and philosophy stamp them unmistakably as modern-day barbarians.
We are in an era in which the issue of human rights is the central question confronting all nations. In this complex struggle an obvious but little-appreciated fact has gained attention - the large majority of the human race is non-white, yet it is that large majority that lives in hideous poverty. While millions enjoy an unexampled opulence in developed nations 10,000 people die of hunger each and every day of the year in the undeveloped world. To assert white supremacy, to invoke white economic and military power to main the status quo is to foster the danger of international race war. Already the largest nation on earth, Red China, plays seriously with the concept of colour conflict. What does the South African Government contribute to this tense situation? These are the incendiary words of the South African philosophy spoken by its Prime Minister Dr. Verwoerd:
"We want to keep South Africa white. Keeping it white can only mean one thing, namely white domination, not 'leadership', not 'guidance', but control, supremacy."
The South African Government to make the white supreme has had to reach into the past and revive the nightmarish ideology and practices of Nazism. We are witnessing a recrudescence of that barbarism which murdered more humans than any war in history. In South Africa today all opposition to white supremacy is condemned as communism, and in its name, due process is destroyed, a medieval segregation is organised with twentieth century efficiency and drive, a sophisticated form of slavery is imposed by a minority upon a majority who are kept in grinding poverty, the dignity of human personality is defiled and world opinion is arrogantly defied.
Once more we read of tortures in jails with electric devices, suicides among prisoners, forced confessions, while in the outside community ruthless persecution of editors, religious leaders and political opponents suppresses free speech and a free press.
South Africa says to the world, "we have become a powerful industrial economy, we are too strong to be defeated by paper resolutions of world tribunals, we are immune to protest and to economic reprisals. We are invulnerable to opposition from within or without; if our evil offends you, you will have to learn to live with it".
Increasingly in recent months this conclusion has been echoed by sober commentators of other countries who disapprove, but nevertheless assert that there can be no remedy against this formidable adversary of human rights.
Do we too acknowledge defeat? Have we tried everything and failed? In examining this question as Americans we are immediately struck by the fact that the United States moved with strikingly different energy when it reached a dubious conclusion that our interests were threatened in the Dominican Republic. We inundated that small nation with overwhelming force shocking the world with our zealousness and naked power. With respect to South Africa however, our protest is so muted and peripheral it merely mildly disturbs the sensibilities of the segregationists, while our trade and investments substantially stimulate their economy to greater heights. We pat them on the wrist in permitting racially mixed receptions in our embassy, and by exhibiting films depicting Negro artists. But we give them massive support through American investments in motor and rubber industries, by extending some forty million dollars in loans through our most distinguished banking and financial institutions, by purchasing gold and other minerals mined by black slave labour, by giving them a sugar quota, by maintaining three tracking stations there and by providing them with the prestige of a nuclear reactor built with our technical cooperation and fueled with refined uranium supplied by us.
When it is realised that Great Britain, France and other democratic powers also prop up the economy of South Africa and when to all of this is added the fact that the U.S.S.R. has indicated its willingness to participate in a boycott it is proper to wonder how South Africa can so confidently defy the civilised world. The conclusion is inescapable that it is less sure of its own power, but more sure that the great nations will not sacrifice trade and profit to effectively oppose them. The shame of our nation is that it is objectively an ally of this monstrous government in its grim war with its own black people.
Our default is all the more grievous because one of the blackest pages of our history was our participation in the infamous African slave trade of the 17th century. The rape of Africa was conducted substantially for our benefit to facilitate the growth of our nation and to enhance its commerce. There are few parallels in human history of the period in which Africans were seized and branded like animals, packed into ships` holds like cargo and transported into chattel slavery. Millions suffered agonising death in the middle passage in a holocaust reminiscent of the Nazi slaughter of Jews, Poles and others. We have an obligation of atonement that is not cancelled by the passage of time. Indeed the slave trade in one sense was more understandable than our contemporary policy. There was less sense of humanity in the world three hundred years ago. The slave trade was widely approved by the major powers of the world. The economies of England, Spain and the United States rested heavily on the profits derived from it. Today in our opulent society our reliance on trade with South Africa is infinitesimal in significance. No real national interest impels us to be cautious, gentle, or a good customer of a nation that offends the world`s conscience.
Have we the power to be more than peevish with South Africa, but yet refrain from acts of war? To list the extensive economic relations of the great powers with South Africa is to suggest a potent non-violent path. The international potential of non-violence has never been employed. Non-violence has been practised within national borders in India, the United States and in regions of Africa with spectacular success. The time has come fully to utilise non-violence through a massive international boycott which would involve the U.S.S.R., Great Britain, France, the United States, Germany and Japan. Millions of people can personally give expression to their abhorrence of the world`s worst racism through such a far flung boycott. No nation professing a concern for man`s dignity could avoid assuming its obligations if people of all states and races adopted a firm stand. Nor need we confine an international boycott to South Africa. Rhodesia has earned a place as a target, as has Portugal, colonial master of Angola and Mozambique. The time has come for an international alliance of peoples of all nations against racism.
For the American Negro there is a special relationship with Africa. It is the land of his origin. It was despoiled by invaders, its culture was arrested and concealed to justify white supremacy. The American Negro`s ancestors were not only driven into slavery, but their links with their past were severed so that their servitude might be psychological as well as physical. In this period when the American Negro is giving moral leadership and inspiration to his own nation, he must find the resources to aid his suffering brothers in his ancestral homeland. Nor is this aid a one-way street. The civil rights movement in the United States has derived immense inspiration from the successful struggles of those Africans who have attained freedom in their own nations. The fact that black men govern states, are building democratic institutions, sit in world tribunals, and participate in global decision-making gives every Negro a needed sense of dignity.
In this effort the American Negro will not be alone. As this meeting testifies there are many white people who know that liberty is indivisible. Even more inspiring is the fact that in South Africa itself incredibly brave white people are risking their careers, their homes and their lives in the cause of human justice. Nor is this a plea to Negroes to fight on two fronts. The struggle for freedom forms one long front crossing oceans and mountains. The brotherhood of man is not confined within a narrow, limited circle of select people. It is felt everywhere in the world, it is an international sentiment of surpassing strength and because this is true when men of good will finally unite they will be invincible.
Through recent anthropological discoveries science has substantially established that the cradle of humanity is Africa. The earliest creatures who passed the divide between animal and man seem to have first emerged in East and South Africa. Professor Raymond Dart described this historical epoch as the moment when man "trembled on the brink of humanity". A million years later in the same place some men of South Africa are again "trembling on the brink of humanity", but instead of advancing from pre-human to human they are reversing the process and are travelling backward in time from human to pre-human.
Civilisation has come a long way, it has far still to go and it cannot afford to be set back by resolute wicked men. Negroes were dispersed over thousands of miles and over many continents yet today they have found each other again. Negro and white have been separated for centuries by evil men and evil myths. But they have found each other. The powerful unity of Negro with Negro and white with Negro is stronger than the most potent and entrenched racism. The whole human race will benefit when it ends the abomination that has diminished the stature of man for too long. This is the task to which we are called by the suffering in South Africa and our response should be swift and unstinting. Out of this struggle will come the glorious reality of the family of man.